RockShox adds 650b, drops Dual-Air

While the addition of a 650b Revelation is big news, the more sweeping change is the elimination of the RockShox’s Dual-Air system in favor of a single air adjustment. For those unfamiliar with Dual-Air, two separate chambers were used to regulate the fork’s positive and negative air springs. The Dual-Air system was highly tunable, but left a wide margin for error in setup.

The new Solo-Air system uses one valve to regulate both the positive and negative air chambers, making setup much easier. The new system has the added benefit of decreasing the amount of parts in the fork, which also sheds precious grams. Solo-Air will be found on 2013 RockShox SID, Reba, and Revelation models.

Rockshox revised their cable-actuated Push-Loc system to mimic the feel of the hydraulic X-Loc lockout lever, found on high-end forks. The new Push-Loc is also Matchmaker compatible.

In the back of the bike the Monarch RT3 is revised with a wider lever throw between, the open, pedal, and lock-out modes. This should make it easier for riders to make on-the-fly adjustments.

Rockshox has decoupled each adjustment, allowing bike companies a greater ability to tune the feel of each of the three settings to suit the ride characteristics of their bikes.

New for 2013 is the addition of what the company calls Rapid Recovery, this feature allows the rear suspension to rebound faster on high-speed, successive hits. This could help shorter-travel bikes by preventing them from “stacking up.”